Murdering South African Miners – and Killing the Truth

While ANC leader and South African president Joseph Zuma has called for a commission of inquiry and declared a national week of mourning. Cyril Ramaphosa, once a militant workers’ leader and now a multi-millionaire with shares in the Lonmin mine, has offered to pay for the funerals. Zuma and Ramaphosa are total hypocrites. The massacre of these workers is the perfectly logical outcome of the entire course of the ANC since it won the country’s first democratic elections in 1994 – Shan Van Vocht

Earlier this month at the Marikana platinum mine near Johannesburg armed South African police massacred striking miners who attacked their lines. 34 lives were lost. That’s 20 more than the Irish experienced in a similar massacre in Derry just over 40 years ago and which continues to shape Irish perceptions of the British state’s security trumps rights agenda.

Frank Lesenyego, a spokesperson for South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority offers this explanation:

Asked to clarify the confusion – after police commissioner Riah Phiyega had earlier confirmed that the miners died after police shot at them with live ammunition – Lesenyego said: “It’s technical but, in legal [terms], when people attack or confront [the police] and a shooting takes place which results in fatalities … suspects arrested, irrespective of whether they shot police members or the police shot them, are charged with murder.”

On August 16, police shot dead 34 striking mineworkers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in North West.

On the same day, the 259 workers were arrested for public violence. Another 78 were admitted to hospital.